Everyone in the world seems to be preoccupied with corroborating the popular rhyme that its going to tough for businesses especially start-ups to survive the ongoing economic meltdown.
The logic sounds too strong to ignore, drying up market demand and the fact that increasingly capital finds cash more interesting than a risky asset in hand (or any asset in hand for that matter). Any thought of start-ups having a chance looks naive at best.
I take unpopular stand and see this turbulence as a great opportunity for startups. Startups who can provide disruptive models for cash preservation & growth for struggling enterprises.
When companies are struggling to survive, they are willing to try risky options that give them hope. The alternatives are far too gloomy.
Startups are always risky options to do business with, but these options can look more attractive than ever before if they can offer hope of longevity and survival for struggling enterprises.
My suggestion to budding entrepreneurs? Evolve an interesting model that creates real cash burn reduction options for struggling CEOs. You would be surprised, how enthusiastically market laps up your services.
Its time to think out of box and that's the only way startups can survive.
--
Subodh Vinchurkar, is founder of ADPS Consulting and can be reached at subodhv AT adpsconsulting.com
Showing posts with label india startups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india startups. Show all posts
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Sunday, November 4, 2007
UGC Play YouMagix goes Vertical
Here is official Press Release
In spite of all the buzz about Internet products, Internet landscape in India lacks basic & reliable services that people take for granted in western world. Today, Indian Internet story requires not merely cool technology but a reliable service delivery & content infrastructure that can deliver powerful productivity enhancements to millions over world wide web.
In this context Ghoomo.com's launch of movies & show time finder services signals an important value addition milestone in Indian Internet consumer space.
What makes Ghoomo.com unique is the breadth and depth of movie finder services that Ghoomo makes available to consumers in India. At present, Ghoomo covers 25 Indian cities and over 500 movie screens. In near future, Ghoomo plans to make movie finder services available to 50 cities & over 1000 movie screens in India.
Another significant aspect of Ghoomo services is an effective marriage of User Generated Content & credible content driven by robust backend processes to provide a powerful and useful movies & show time search experience.
Ghoomo.com is a part of YouMagix.com, an experimental stage family of products. YouMagix product range intends to fill content availability gaps in countries such as India by innovative application of User Generated Content.
As Ghoomo.com rolls out complete service offerings in coming days, a hassle free & seamless movie planning experience can no longer be a dream for movie goers in India.
In spite of all the buzz about Internet products, Internet landscape in India lacks basic & reliable services that people take for granted in western world. Today, Indian Internet story requires not merely cool technology but a reliable service delivery & content infrastructure that can deliver powerful productivity enhancements to millions over world wide web.
In this context Ghoomo.com's launch of movies & show time finder services signals an important value addition milestone in Indian Internet consumer space.
What makes Ghoomo.com unique is the breadth and depth of movie finder services that Ghoomo makes available to consumers in India. At present, Ghoomo covers 25 Indian cities and over 500 movie screens. In near future, Ghoomo plans to make movie finder services available to 50 cities & over 1000 movie screens in India.
Another significant aspect of Ghoomo services is an effective marriage of User Generated Content & credible content driven by robust backend processes to provide a powerful and useful movies & show time search experience.
Ghoomo.com is a part of YouMagix.com, an experimental stage family of products. YouMagix product range intends to fill content availability gaps in countries such as India by innovative application of User Generated Content.
As Ghoomo.com rolls out complete service offerings in coming days, a hassle free & seamless movie planning experience can no longer be a dream for movie goers in India.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Why did Lightspeed take AskLaila bet?
Ever since I heard the news of LightSpeed led $10 million investment in AskLaila, I have been scratching my head and searching for answers. For starters, AskLaila is a purely India focused local yellowpage website with an added layer of basic value added services such as user reviews.
How much ever I may wish to laugh away this investment as one of the 90% VC investments that go down the drain, the reality is that nobody, especially hardened breed known as venture capitalist, invests $10million without a clear glimpse of potential high payoff.
Here is a clue, when we look at Indian Market there are two clear realities that strike an aware mind
1. One one hand, we see a growing economy, that clearly has a potential to be one of the largest in the world in next couple of decades. With a vibrant economy comes phenomenal consumption demand that can raise many billion dollar companies in basic customer facing services alone.
2. On the other hand, we have an utterly underdeveloped consumer services infrastructure. A casual visitor from western world can clearly appreciate that India lacks basic services that everybody in the West takes for granted.
Now you start to see some method in the investment madness across sectors in India. We are talking about basic consumer facing infrastructure that can deliver reliable services day in and day out, which does not exist in India today.
When it comes to basic infrastructure, It may take a lot of investment & efforts to build something that works, but successful players will have the last laugh.
Three cheers for hundreds of AskLailas, Lightspeed Ventures, entrepreneurs and investors who have decided to take a plunge.
--
Writer is founder of youmagix.com and can be reached at subodhv AT gmail.com
How much ever I may wish to laugh away this investment as one of the 90% VC investments that go down the drain, the reality is that nobody, especially hardened breed known as venture capitalist, invests $10million without a clear glimpse of potential high payoff.
Here is a clue, when we look at Indian Market there are two clear realities that strike an aware mind
1. One one hand, we see a growing economy, that clearly has a potential to be one of the largest in the world in next couple of decades. With a vibrant economy comes phenomenal consumption demand that can raise many billion dollar companies in basic customer facing services alone.
2. On the other hand, we have an utterly underdeveloped consumer services infrastructure. A casual visitor from western world can clearly appreciate that India lacks basic services that everybody in the West takes for granted.
Now you start to see some method in the investment madness across sectors in India. We are talking about basic consumer facing infrastructure that can deliver reliable services day in and day out, which does not exist in India today.
When it comes to basic infrastructure, It may take a lot of investment & efforts to build something that works, but successful players will have the last laugh.
Three cheers for hundreds of AskLailas, Lightspeed Ventures, entrepreneurs and investors who have decided to take a plunge.
--
Writer is founder of youmagix.com and can be reached at subodhv AT gmail.com
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Google Flags End of Commodity Yellow Page Local Search Game in India
Google has silently introduced its killer Google local application to Indian web audience. An interesting development for Indian Internet Space & this is how I look at the impact of this launch on Indian web space.
On one hand, I see big cheers from the Indian internet users who will get the most relevant yellow page results on top of Google searches for local businesses and they will get to write reviews on those businesses. On the other hand, it signals end of idea arbitrage era in this lucrative segment. Be prepared to see demise of a lot of pure play yellowpage and local search based web models in Indian internet space.
Copycat and pure no additional value plays such as business listings on Internet were destined to this fate as no one can claim copyright over a business address and a phone number. Google can always crawl all the content or listing from any website making them available to its users and a mind-share battle with Google is a non-starter.
This may not be a good news for models such as Sulekha Business Listings or new Indian startup ventures such as asklaila. Nevertheless, I do not see it as end of the road for all the players in this segment.
Internet players who are innovative and are able to provide unique value to its visitors over and beyond pure business listings or simple value additions such as plain reviews (Google listing features) will survive. Though I am biased, I list YouMagix as one of the probable survivors as it is uniquely positioned and is beyond the clutter of pure yellow page listing models under threat from Google's entry in this space.
I welcome Google local to India as it forces Indian net players to think beyond the obvious and drives them hard to innovate in order to survive and thrive in this interesting space.
On one hand, I see big cheers from the Indian internet users who will get the most relevant yellow page results on top of Google searches for local businesses and they will get to write reviews on those businesses. On the other hand, it signals end of idea arbitrage era in this lucrative segment. Be prepared to see demise of a lot of pure play yellowpage and local search based web models in Indian internet space.
Copycat and pure no additional value plays such as business listings on Internet were destined to this fate as no one can claim copyright over a business address and a phone number. Google can always crawl all the content or listing from any website making them available to its users and a mind-share battle with Google is a non-starter.
This may not be a good news for models such as Sulekha Business Listings or new Indian startup ventures such as asklaila. Nevertheless, I do not see it as end of the road for all the players in this segment.
Internet players who are innovative and are able to provide unique value to its visitors over and beyond pure business listings or simple value additions such as plain reviews (Google listing features) will survive. Though I am biased, I list YouMagix as one of the probable survivors as it is uniquely positioned and is beyond the clutter of pure yellow page listing models under threat from Google's entry in this space.
I welcome Google local to India as it forces Indian net players to think beyond the obvious and drives them hard to innovate in order to survive and thrive in this interesting space.
Friday, July 27, 2007
YouMagix: Is it Web-2.0 or is it UGC Portal?
There is a debate in blogosphere about whether YouMagix is a web2.0 portal or a yellow page portal or just another user generated content attempt.
Checkout YouMagix team's thoughts about the question.
Checkout YouMagix team's thoughts about the question.
Monday, July 23, 2007
YouMagix.com - Find your Options
A very late update as your truly was busy in launching his new venture YouMagix
Checkout YouMagix website and YouMagix Blog for more information about this venture.
Your feedback is welcome!
Checkout YouMagix website and YouMagix Blog for more information about this venture.
Your feedback is welcome!
Monday, July 2, 2007
Advertising to Paid Audience - A Cool Idea or an Economic Non Starter
Advertising to paid audience is an economic non-starter. The businesses have little reasons to advertise on such platforms because on is perverse economic incentive. as the receiver of ads are solely driven by incentive to make money will not have need in most of the cases for services/products that they choose to receive communication for.
enidhi blog has an interesting analysis of mGinger business model. Checkout if you want to understand the economics around a model that leverages paid audience as ad consumers.
enidhi blog has an interesting analysis of mGinger business model. Checkout if you want to understand the economics around a model that leverages paid audience as ad consumers.
Podcasting and India Startups
Podcasting is an interesting medium. Though going by the numbers, it is not a viable venture driver or a full fledged marketing medium yet, it throws up interesting options for startups if target market is around the same psycho-graphic profile.
1. If your target market is upwardly mobile, rich multimedia hungry audience. This can be a great medium to reach that niche audience with biggest ROI on marketing dollars when compared to other potential channels.
2. You can also use podcast to monetize some part of your core IP or Idea. For example, a job board can use custom podcast offering to it's advertisers as a premium service.
The moral of the story, go and leverage this new and interesting medium to get largest buck for your core idea. If you are willing and ready to wait for next 2-4 years, you may also do well to plan your venture around podcasting and vcasting (video streaming).
1. If your target market is upwardly mobile, rich multimedia hungry audience. This can be a great medium to reach that niche audience with biggest ROI on marketing dollars when compared to other potential channels.
2. You can also use podcast to monetize some part of your core IP or Idea. For example, a job board can use custom podcast offering to it's advertisers as a premium service.
The moral of the story, go and leverage this new and interesting medium to get largest buck for your core idea. If you are willing and ready to wait for next 2-4 years, you may also do well to plan your venture around podcasting and vcasting (video streaming).
Saturday, June 23, 2007
A bold step towards Hindi Web
Startup dunia introduces lipik.in, an online product that provides users facilities to create documents in Hindi, save them and edit them later. Imagine Google documents for pure Hindi audience with no transliteration based interfaces.
A very interesting product. Though I found it extremely difficult to enter anything in Hindi -- owing to my two decades of "qwerty keyboard" mental programming (habits die hard) -- a person who never has used an English keyboard would find it an extremely useful service.
I foresee a lot of interesting action around this concept,
1. It makes internet accessible to half a billion people who can only read and write in Hindi and who have never used "qwerty English keyboard"
2. a complete new web is possible around this concept including that of email, blogs, forums & social networking platforms
I also foresee an interesting niche for VC investment with easy exit option around high value acquisitions.
A very interesting product. Though I found it extremely difficult to enter anything in Hindi -- owing to my two decades of "qwerty keyboard" mental programming (habits die hard) -- a person who never has used an English keyboard would find it an extremely useful service.
I foresee a lot of interesting action around this concept,
1. It makes internet accessible to half a billion people who can only read and write in Hindi and who have never used "qwerty English keyboard"
2. a complete new web is possible around this concept including that of email, blogs, forums & social networking platforms
I also foresee an interesting niche for VC investment with easy exit option around high value acquisitions.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
India Startups Ecosystem Update 19-June, 2007
RouteGuru provides Directions Indian Way
Sparksfly blog introduces RouteGuru an interesting startup that provides driving directions the Indian Way. According to RouteGure website, technology is from Navolve Technologies and ackend mapping data is provided by Eicher Goodearth Ltd.
Helion Venture Partners' Ashish Gupta on Venture Investing and more...
Ashish Gupta, Managing Partner of Helion Venture Partners, talks about entrepreneurship, investing and entrepreneurs.
Helion is a $140 million india focused fund and it has recently invested in Komli, Anantara Solutions and Amba Research.
The Hindu publishes this interesting and informative dialogue with an entrepreneur turned VC, checkout...
Go Global - ISB Mantra for Indian SMEs
An interesting point of view from Jerry George, LBS professor and visiting faculty at ISB, who was at the SME program organized by ISB for SME business to help them go global.
Thinking BIG is a pre-requisite for high potential enterprises and I resonate with Jerry that Indian entrepreneurs do suffer from small thinking syndrome. Even after thinking hard, I do not recall a single encounter with an entrepreneur in India who tells me that he is working on a "Billion Dollar" idea.
Helping SMEs to think global is a welcome step, well done ISB!
Sparksfly blog introduces RouteGuru an interesting startup that provides driving directions the Indian Way. According to RouteGure website, technology is from Navolve Technologies and ackend mapping data is provided by Eicher Goodearth Ltd.
Helion Venture Partners' Ashish Gupta on Venture Investing and more...
Ashish Gupta, Managing Partner of Helion Venture Partners, talks about entrepreneurship, investing and entrepreneurs.
Helion is a $140 million india focused fund and it has recently invested in Komli, Anantara Solutions and Amba Research.
The Hindu publishes this interesting and informative dialogue with an entrepreneur turned VC, checkout...
Go Global - ISB Mantra for Indian SMEs
An interesting point of view from Jerry George, LBS professor and visiting faculty at ISB, who was at the SME program organized by ISB for SME business to help them go global.
Thinking BIG is a pre-requisite for high potential enterprises and I resonate with Jerry that Indian entrepreneurs do suffer from small thinking syndrome. Even after thinking hard, I do not recall a single encounter with an entrepreneur in India who tells me that he is working on a "Billion Dollar" idea.
Helping SMEs to think global is a welcome step, well done ISB!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
adMad.mobi - A new Mobile Startup in India
Pranav introduces admad.mobi venture on Startupdunia blog. The concept is interesting and after going through the details, I believe, this is a very innovative replication of permission based "pay per view" style of marketing in mobile world. Very interesting and exciting launch checkout
Friday, June 8, 2007
India Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Update June-8, 2007
Via receives $5 million in venture funding from NEA-IndoUS Ventures
Via (earlier Flight Raja) is an interesting venture that combines power of online efficiencies and reach of offline channels to reach a broader audience. Via has a plan to become leader in travel and transportation game including air travel, bus transport and leisure market segment.
NEA-Indo US ventures is a venture capital firm co-founded by K. Dham and K ola.
AMAI Web 2.0 Conference
AMAI’s is organizing a conference on Web 2.0, on 22nd June in Mumbai. Good opportunity to network with people with ideas and capital. Follow this link for more details
Proto.in Agenda
Proto.in has come up with initial agenda for the event. You can also submit your comments on their blog. Your suggestions may find their place in the final list.
India Opportunity Seminar
Chilli, a platform for entrepreneurial business stakeholders is organizing “New India, new economy: the myths, realities and opportunities” seminar. This seminar takes place in Bath on the 21st June at the Innovation Centre
Via (earlier Flight Raja) is an interesting venture that combines power of online efficiencies and reach of offline channels to reach a broader audience. Via has a plan to become leader in travel and transportation game including air travel, bus transport and leisure market segment.
NEA-Indo US ventures is a venture capital firm co-founded by K. Dham and K ola.
AMAI Web 2.0 Conference
AMAI’s is organizing a conference on Web 2.0, on 22nd June in Mumbai. Good opportunity to network with people with ideas and capital. Follow this link for more details
Proto.in Agenda
Proto.in has come up with initial agenda for the event. You can also submit your comments on their blog. Your suggestions may find their place in the final list.
India Opportunity Seminar
Chilli, a platform for entrepreneurial business stakeholders is organizing “New India, new economy: the myths, realities and opportunities” seminar. This seminar takes place in Bath on the 21st June at the Innovation Centre
Saturday, May 26, 2007
New Web2.0 Venture - Younews
First of it's kind in India, a venture that plans to experiment whether user generated news can become full stream media outlet. Younews, launched as beta this week, is planned as a complete user powered news outlet where users decide what is an important news and nation can see a snapshot of what country, as a collective, think is taking place in the India.
This sounds similar to what Digg gave Internet world but success in Indian context is not guaranteed. Majority of Indian Internet is either office or cyber cafe driven.
You news can do much better if it includes India specific innovations. For example, a mobile driven open news platform can potentially tap 10 crore (100 million) minds or an additional regional language angle can take it to next step.
This sounds similar to what Digg gave Internet world but success in Indian context is not guaranteed. Majority of Indian Internet is either office or cyber cafe driven.
You news can do much better if it includes India specific innovations. For example, a mobile driven open news platform can potentially tap 10 crore (100 million) minds or an additional regional language angle can take it to next step.
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